We’re treating soil like dirt. It’s a fatal mistake, as our lives depend on it
We’re treating soil like dirt. It’s a fatal mistake, as our lives depend on itBy George Monbiot
It’s literally and – it seems – metaphorically, beneath us. To judge by its absence from the media, most journalists consider it unworthy of consideration. But all human life depends on it. We knew this long ago, but somehow it has been forgotten. As a Sanskrit text written in about 1500BC noted: “Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel and our shelter and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it.”
The issue hasn’t changed, but we have. Landowners around the world are now engaged in an orgy of soil destruction so intense that, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world on average has just 60 more years of growing crops. Even in Britain, which is spared the tropical downpours that so quickly strip exposed soil from the land, Farmers Weekly reports, we have “only 100 harvests left”.
To keep up with global food demand, the UN estimates, 6m hectares (14.8m acres) of new farmland will be needed every year. Instead, 12m hectares a year are lost through soil degradation. We wreck it, then move on, trashing rainforests and other precious habitats as we go. Soil is an almost magical substance, a living system that transforms the materials it encounters, making them available to plants. That handful the Vedic master showed his disciples contains more micro-organisms than all the people who have ever lived on Earth. Yet we treat it like, well, dirt.
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Another paper, by researchers in the UK, shows that soil in allotments – the small patches in towns and cities that people cultivate by hand – contains a third more organic carbon than agricultural soil and 25% more nitrogen. This is one of the reasons why allotment holders produce between four and 11 times more food per hectare than do farmers.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/25/treating-soil-like-dirt-fatal-mistake-human-life
= new reply since forum marked as read
in solidarity against it.. but unfortunately not enough.
I hope it's not a case of an epidemic of mass sickness from their poisons for monsanto to be held accountable and kicked off our Islands and the Mainland USA, DCMS
https://www.facebook.com/Save.Hawai.from.Monsanto
I pointed out that the way suburban land is treated (Lawn Doctor, leaf blowers), leads to erosion of the topsoil. Once that's removed (that's what leaf blowers do, after all), the plants and trees have nothing to feed them.
Sometimes the homeowner goes to Home Depot and buys compost and fertilizer. Well, how smart AND fuel-inefficient is that? Not to mention the fact that it's a cost incurred that is totally unnecessary.
Why not just keep the leaves on the property, chop them if you want, and feed the trees and plants that way?
Cher
However, it's not the great solution one might assume.
It would be for branches, because heavy-duty equipment is needed to break them down into small pieces.
But what happens in reality is that leaves are picked up by the town, the town subcontracts to some company to compost all this, and then they turn around and sell it to Home Depot as compost.
So why go through all that? Just cut out the middle man and compost the leaves without driving them all over the place.
I did a study about 5 years ago and found the cost of this to be over a million per town in my county.
Stupid way to spend money.
Oh, and did I mention my property taxes are $16,500 a year on an ordinary middle-income house?
Cher
I made a mistake. I was looking at my tax return last night and found out they are only $14,500. They will go up to $16,500 this year, though, because every year since Christie has been governor, they've gone up $2000 a year.
Cher
